Syrian activists call more protests after dozens dead

Anti-regime activists in Syria have called for "Children's Friday" protests, snubbing government concessions after a week in which they said security forces killed more than 60 people.The fresh protests are to honour the children killed in the uprising, such as 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib whom activists say was tortured to death, a charge denied by the authorities.The UN children's agency UNICEF says at least 30 children have been shot dead in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic rule which erupted in mid-March.

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Syrian security forces shot dead 15 protestors and injured dozens as tens of thousands of anti-regime demonstrators surged onto the streets, prompting Europe to blast the "shocking" crackdown.Friday's demonstrations were a response to a call by the Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011, a driving force behind three months of protests against the autocratic rule of President Bashar al-Assad.Five people died in Damascus, another five in the town of Kiswah south of the capital, three in Homs and two others near the central city, activists told AFP.

BEIRUT — The Lebanese army fired on Syrian aircraft that violated the country’s airspace Monday, the first time Lebanon has done so since Syria’s uprising broke out nearly three years ago, security officials said.
The move suggests Beirut is trying to enforce greater respect for its borders in the hopes of slowing the expansion of the conflict into Lebanon, where it has exacerbated sectarian tensions and prompted shadowy groups to conduct attacks that have killed dozens this year.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Suicide bombers targeted security compounds in Damascus and a car bomb exploded in a pro-regime district there Sunday, killing at least eight people, the latest in a surge of civil war violence in the capital.
In northern Syria, a car bomb killed 12 soldiers in Aleppo, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists in Syria for information. It had no other details, and the government did not comment.

The gruesome murder of a commander of a jihadist militia by a radical Islamist group has sparked fierce fighting between rebels across northern Syria.
Hussein Suleiman, a commander in Ahrar Al-Sham, one of the country’s biggest rebel groups, had gone to negotiate with leaders of the ultra-conservative Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) about a local dispute in Maskanah, near Aleppo.
His dead body was later returned to comrades with an ear missing and visible signs of torture.

BEIRUT (AP) — Anti-government violence spread on Saturday in a southern Syrian province that had largely stayed on the sidelines of the country's civil war, a day after the killing of a prominent cleric in rare explosions that claimed the lives of at least 25 others, activists and pro-government media said.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian intelligent agents abducted Akram al-Bunni, a prominent leftist writer and former political prisoner, as he left a wedding reception at a central Damascus hotel on Saturday, opposition activists said.

BEIRUT — Syria’s Western-backed opposition plunged into disarray on Sunday as its president resigned and its military leader refused to recognize a prime minister recently elected to lead an interim rebel government.

Dozens of tortured bodies have been found in a flashpoint district of Damascus, a watchdog reported on Monday, in one of the worst atrocities in Syria's 21-month conflict. The report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights came as a gruesome video emerged on the Internet of a separate slaying of three children who had their throats slashed, also in the capital.